After
by element78
Summary: Slash, post-Apocalypse AU- What's a guy to do with his own personal miracle?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Post-Apocalypse AU. There was no Croatoan virus, so this is more Jericho than Resident Evil. The Winchesters were never hunters so the boys weren't the chosen vessels for Michael and Lucifer. It's bleak more than angsty, but I rather like it.

A story told in pieces, rather than the whole, because pieces were all I had. Another chapter will be going up soon. As the story in itself is not cooperating, I have a rare opportunity here: the floor is open for reader prompts. One word prompts as a title for a piece, or a scene that I will attempt to work into this 'verse.

* * *

><p>1. Angel<p>

Four years after the Apocalypse, Dean finds an angel in his barn.

The house is a couple miles outside of the one-time college town of Lawrence, and has arable land on only two sides- ahead across the road and off the back of the house about five hundred yards away- all of which was sold off long before Dean inherited the place. In a post-apocalyptic world, After, there's little place in farm country for someone who doesn't know how to farm, so Dean acts as mechanic and hired muscle for anyone who needs any sort of help, and the farmers tolerate him because he's a born-and-raised local, not some city kid trying to find an easier life. He keeps up on the barn's upkeep because it's something to do, something to help wile the hours away while waiting for something to happen. The end of the world again, maybe.

One brisk spring evening, the drizzling rain cold enough that Dean's hair is standing up in frozen spikes, he opens the door and heads inside and stops dead when he nearly walks right into someone.

The man is wet and muddy, shaking slightly. He's wearing a suit, which Dean hasn't seen since Before, and blood is tracing the lines of his right palm and dripping off his fingertips. He watches Dean with the biggest, brightest blue eyes Dean has ever seen.

"I don't…" he began, his voice a harsh rasp of a noise, and then Dean is lunging forward to catch him as he collapses.

He has no ID of any sort- not that big a surprise these days- except for the source of the blood. Dean stares at it, drags a towel over the vicious cuts to wipe away the blood, studying the patterns carved into the skin. The cuts are along the inside of his right forearm, from wrist halfway to elbow, deep and an angry red- doused with salt water, if he has to guess- and old but still bleeding. They had not been allowed to heal, which makes sense- so long as the symbols remained, the wards will restrain him, and the angel cannot use even the most basic of his powers. Until the wounds heal, he is almost human.

And he is an angel, no doubt about that.

Dean hasn't seen one of these celestial jackasses before, but he has heard the stories. Angels are only so much light, poured into and possessing a person like a demon. Soldiers of Heaven, they are, and woe be to the humans who had forgotten that vital fact- soldiers of Heaven, not Earth. They had watched the world burn and had fanned the flames; two of their own were ultimately responsible for all of it, or so Dean had heard. And then, like the demons, they had disappeared, returning to Heaven and Hell and leaving the world in between alone.

Dean washes off the angel's warded, carved arm and winds pieces of a worn old t-shirt around it as a temporary dressing. He doesn't know the angel's chances of surviving in this world, marked or not. He also doesn't know why the idiot is here. Certainly Heaven had to be a lot more appealing than this train wreck. He gets the towels and the rough wool blanket out of the locker under the stairs and half-carries, half-drags the angel to a relatively secluded corner, tucking him in. Then he sits back on his heels and waits.

"Where'd you come from?" he asks almost an hour later. "And don't say Heaven."

"North," the angel replies in his ruined voice. North, Dean thinks. The militia? Their leader Grayson certainly has the balls to try to catch himself an angel. "Where am I?"

"Farm country," Dean says, using the new name for the agriculturally rich heart of the country. "Little town called Lawrence, back Before. Heard of it?"

"Yes," comes the soft reply. "Kansas."

Dean waits, but it seems no more is forthcoming. After a while he shifts a bit, leaning forward so he can see the angel's face in profile.

"Any particular reason why I shouldn't just kill you now?" he asks. The angel doesn't even blink.

"No," he whispers, then grabs the blanket and pulls it up over his face. Dean takes the hint and heads back to the house, where he goes and gets a beer- highly limited, those, and therefore a special treat. He has an angel in the barn- by nature, lying double-crossing hypocritical bastards. And he was, however passively, taking care of the thing.

It takes a long time for sleep to come that night.

* * *

><p>2. Injury<p>

The angel is not the best company, Dean finds. He's skittish and standoffish and hides in the barn like a scared cat. Anytime Dean goes anywhere near him, the angel watches him like a rabbit watches a fox, normally from some shadowy corner where Dean can feel that intense gaze on him but can't actually see the angel, thus creeping him out majorly and encouraging him to leave quickly. He doesn't eat or sleep, which holds with what the humans learned about angels during the war, and the only conversation they've had was on that first night.

He had assumed the angel would say something about his arm not getting any better, if it was necessary. Somewhere about day four he abruptly realizes that the angel wouldn't know the injury isn't getting better, is in fact getting worse, as this is probably the first time in his life that he has encountered something he can't heal.

So Dean did what he does best and took matters into his own hands.

He drags his toolkit, plus a few extras, into the barn and sets to work repairing the stairs, carefully not watching the angel. After the first few minutes of tension and wariness, the two settle into their respective tasks, Dean prying up the most rot-worn boards and the angel doing whatever it is he does in here all day.

Then Dean drops his hammer, which clatters away and comes to a rest just shy of the angel's hiding place, and the angel makes the mistake of bringing it back over. Dean waits until just the right moment before lunging at the angel, catching him around the waist in a tackle that a three-hundred-pound linebacker would be proud of. And even as much as he hates these bastards, he can't help but wince in sympathy when the angel's breath whooshes out of him in a rush when he hits the ground.

By the time the angel can breathe again, he's flat on his back, Dean kneeling over him and straddling his waist. His left hand is pinned beneath Dean's knee and the right caught in an iron tight grip. When Dean feels him tense in preparation of a struggle, he digs his thumb into the angel's wrist, putting just enough pressure on the wounds that his captive gives a tight little whimper and holds himself statue-still.

It's not right, an angel yielding to a human, lacking the strength to do otherwise. Dean unwinds the bandages, feeling fever-hot skin under his fingers, and knows there's trouble even before he sees the angry red swelling.

"See this?" he asks the angel, turning his arm so he can see the injuries. The blue eyes flicker briefly to his wrist, then focus back on Dean's face. "That's infection," Dean continues, ignoring the quiet fear in those eyes. "You can't just ignore shit like this. Something like this happens, you tell me, got it?"

His toolbox is within reach, barely. He pulls out the bottle of rubbing alcohol and unscrews it with one hand, not trusting the angel's good behavior enough to let him go. Then he pauses, meeting the angel's gaze again.

"This is gonna hurt like a bitch," he says, honest and blunt. "But you sit still and do what I tell you, and I'll get this done as fast as I can."

It does indeed hurt like a bitch, and not just for the angel- at some point Dean goes from holding his wrist to holding his hand, and even without his angelic superstrength the guy manages to just about break all of Dean's fingers- but the patient is amazingly cooperative for the most part. There is one bad moment when Dean pulls out the knife, sterilized in boiling water back in the house. The angel goes tense, his breathing fast and ragged- flashing back to the day he got these wounds, Dean guesses. He ignores it and continues with his work, using the knife to open pockets of infection and cut away the worse of the affected tissue, and when the cuts he's making fail to form any sort of pattern or symbol, the angel slowly relaxes again.

"What's your name, anyways?" Dean asks when he's almost done, trying to get the stupid medical tape to behave.

"Castiel," the angel says. He looks at his butchered arm, freshly tended to and already looking better for it. "Thank you," he adds. Dean spares him glance, wondering for the first time why he was even trying to help this creature.

" 'M Dean," he replies, catching the tape with his teeth and forcing it to straighten out. "An' don' mention it."

* * *

><p>3. Militia<p>

He hears them long before he sees them. It's hard to miss- even in these parts, so close to Texas and its oil rigs and fuel monopoly, the sound multiple vehicles catches attention. Gas is simply too hard to get hold of these days to justify driving around any more than absolutely necessary.

Dean's at the Richardson's, trying to patch up a corroded line in their combine since there's no way in hell he'll find a replacement, when the convoy rides past. It's only three camo-painted jeeps, no doubt gotten off a raided military base, but it's heading towards Dean's house. And he's been waiting for this since the angel turned up in his barn and told him he came from the north.

He pushes himself out, squirming free of the combine's engine compartment. Mitch Richardson, hand-rolled cigarette parked firmly in his mouth and sealant bucket at his feet, spares him a knowing glance.

"Need help?" he offers as Dean twists free and manages to land on his feet.

"Nah," Dean says. "They like to think they're civilized."

"So did the Nazis," Mitch says, and spits at their feet.

Dean doesn't say anything else. He saves his breath for running.

With the American government essentially wiped out, the country- far too big and diverse to hold together on the basis of how things used to be- fractured into undefined pieces. East of the Mississippi they hold to the old style of government and it might as well be a different planet. West of the river, from the eastern border of Missouri to the foothills of the Rockies in Colorado, from southern Oklahoma to the frigid stretch of the Dakotas, is known simply as farm country. Farther north and a bit to the west is militia land.

The militia had risen like a phoenix out of the ashes of the American government, except no one wanted this bird on their hands. They're self-entitled bullies, and well-armed at that, and their leader Grayson is a cold-blooded sociopath. Dean thinks of Castiel, cut up and bleeding because apparently torturing the angel is more fun than actually keeping him under control, and feels a surprising rage rise up. Finally, he figures out why he's helping Castiel at all.

Humans are supposed to be _better than that_, he wants to yell at someone. Humans are supposed to be better than that because the angels sure as hell aren't and if the humans can't be bothered to be better than that then what the hell is the whole point anyways? If this whole thing is just a competition to see who's the lowest, most despicable creatures around, then why even bother?

He reaches the house and finds one of the jeeps parked in the driveway, penning in his rarely-used Impala. The driver and another man are still sitting in it, one talking on the radio while the other keeps a lazy lookout. Dean slows down and approaches at a wary walk, eyes on the semi-autos the militia boys are carrying.

The driver watches him and, when they're close enough to talk without having to yell, nudges his companion. "You the owner?" he calls out.

"Yeah," Dean says, stopping. He's close enough to the house to dodge around the corner before they can shoot him, if it proves necessary. The militia doesn't get the warmest welcome in farm country, and farmers have the clout nowadays to say who's allowed onto their land and who's not. Still, farm country has no true defenses so Grayson's men are tolerated. Better to put up with a few ruffled feathers than spark off the Civil War, Verse Two.

The driver says something into his radio and a moment later the front door opens- went into his house without permission, rat bastards- and the leader comes out. He's wearing fatigues and the infamous buzzcut and even a chain around his neck. Still, Dean was raised by a Marine. He knows the real deal when he sees it, and he's not seeing it now.

"Patrick Coleman," he says to Dean as he comes over. He doesn't offer his hand.

"Dean Winchester. Don't know what you're looking for, but you won't find it, so get out." Good manners will only get you so far with these jokers. Coleman merely smiles.

"Son, we're looking for something special," he says. When Dean doesn't rise to the bait, he continues. "We're looking for an angel."

"An angel?" Dean echoes, feeling something like relief and possibly even hope- so foreign, that one. They haven't found Castiel, and likely won't by now. And the angel's been camping out in the barn, where he doesn't eat or sleep, so there's no indication of a second person living here. "There were never any angels here. Carthage is the closest they got."

"This one is special," Coleman tells him. "We caught him After, a few months ago. He's got," he traced his left index finger over his right wrist, drawing on his skin the sigils and wards carved into Castiel's, "marks right here. Limits his power, he's basically helpless, but it won't last. Once it heals he's back to destroying worlds."

"Even without his powers, he gave you the slip?" Dean asks, unable to help himself. Coleman gives him a long hard look.

"There was an accident. A crash, forty miles north on old 35."

"Forty miles?" Dean echoes. And on old 35, old Interstate 35, which is another thirty miles east of here. "That's a lot of ground to cover."

"Not for an angel. Even without their powers they're tough bastards." Still, it seems even the militia doubts Castiel's ability to get this far. Coleman whistles sharply and two more men appear, one from the barn and one trotting out from around the house where he had no doubt been looking over the fields. In early spring there's no place to hide until you hit the line of trees that divides the properties, some half a mile off.

"Sir," one of the men says quietly. Dean glances over and sees, across the road, his neighbor and two of his farm hands watching the militia boys nonchalantly. One of the hands, who had been an illegal alien Before, has a hunting rifle slung over one shoulder.

No doubt Mitch Richardson had gotten the word out. More would be coming soon if Coleman didn't take the hint and hit the road. The militia boys are better armed, but this is farm country. They're a long way from home. Also, Dean could drop Coleman and one, possibly two, of his men before the others could get a good bead on him, although they don't know that.

"Here," Coleman says, tossing Dean a military radio. "Channel three-eight. You see something, you tell us, hear? Another week or two, that angel'll be all healed up." He climbs into the shotgun seat as the other men jump in, still watching Dean's neighbor with a wary eye.

Dean watches them leave, then waves. The three men across the road wave back and turn to head for home.

* * *

><p>4. Soldier<p>

"Dean." The voice comes from nowhere as he starts up the stairs, originating from the hallway had been empty two seconds ago.

"Fuckin' hell!" Dean barks, jumping and tripping and falling up the stairs. He rolls over and stares, wide-eyed, at Castiel. "Don't do that!"

"I apologize," the angel says. Dean picks himself up, muttering the whole time, and sits on the stairs and pins Castiel with a dour look.

"Where the hell've you been? I thought you took off." And he wasn't remotely disappointed by it, either. The angel had lived in the freaking barn, for crying out loud. They had had exactly two conversations, one of which only because Dean had been sitting on him and he couldn't escape. Not to mention that other little thing- he's an _angel_. You know, the guys who destroyed the world?

"I waited until the militia men had left the area before returning," Castiel says, as if that tells Dean anything.

"Yeah. And, uh, why are you here again?" Dean asks. Coleman's words have been festering in his mind for the better part of two days now- _once it heals he's back to destroying worlds_- and he's been spoiling for a fight. It's high time he got some answers, anyways.

Castiel regards him with a solemn expression, obviously sensing that something had changed. "There is nowhere else for me to go," he says softly.

"Heaven isn't good enough for you?"

"The other way around," Castiel snaps, then looks almost surprised at his own vindictiveness. Dean is surprised for other reasons.

"They kicked you out?" he asked, anger momentarily overridden by disbelief.

"I left," Castiel corrects tightly.

"And why should I believe that?" Dean demands. "Never heard of Heaven's golden boys having issues with the grunts. Maybe you're a scout or something, coming to see what else you can destroy. Like the whole world wasn't good enough."

"Not all of Heaven agreed with the plan," the angel says steadily. He shifts position and looks over Dean's head to something a million miles away- parade rest, Dean realizes suddenly, and feels the sharp aching remembrance that somewhere in there Castiel is still a soldier. "Most of us didn't even know it. We thought we were preventing the Apocalypse, not encouraging it."

"Command lied to you, huh?"

"Michael lied to us." He says it like it's the worst insult he can think of. "And used us."

"And yet you figured it out," Dean says, not sure if he believes. Castiel hesitates.

"One of my- an angel from my garrison told me." There are almost as many pauses in that sentence as there are words. Dean wonders what it sounded like before editing.

"And how did he know?"

"Because Lucifer told him," Castiel says steadily. "He was a traitor. Lucifer was using him to stir up trouble."

Lying, betraying, and manipulating doesn't sound much like the Christian angel mythos. It does, however, sound like the angels the world was so brutally introduced to four years ago, and Dean has to swallow the urge to ask how it feels to get a dose of your own medicine.

"And he told you?"

"He tried to recruit me," the angel says evenly. "And when that failed, he tried to kill me."

The simple, matter-of-fact honesty in that statement throws Dean off-balance enough that he can't find a response to that. Castiel apparently feels the need to fill the resulting silence.

"And we didn't destroy the world."

"Really?" Dean scoffs. "Well, Japan is underwater and Australia is just plain gone. Chicago is a crater and California is an island. Also, three quarters of the world's population is dead. Sorry, Cas, but I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that one."

Those blue eyes finally refocus on the present and look back down at Dean. There is sad, quiet amusement in them.

"No, Dean. We almost destroyed the human race. The argument could be made that, in doing so, we actually saved the world."

Dean doesn't need this crap, not now. After everything the people of Earth have been through he's not going to sit here and listen to a- supposedly friendly- angel rip on them some more. He grabs the banister and hauls himself to his feet, watching as Castiel takes a half-step back. The angel does not fear him, not after that day in the barn when he'd cleaned out the infected wounds, but they haven't hit trust yet either.

"Our world, our problem," he hisses. "You don't like it, go back to Heaven."

He heads upstairs without waiting for a reply.

* * *

><p>5. Stars<p>

He needs to get a dog, he thinks as he listens to the back door open. It might not be much use against his guest- angels have a rapport with animals, humans had been dismayed to learn- but at least it would let him know when people decided to treat his house like Grand Central Station.

"I am sorry," Cas says from his bedroom doorway. Dean lifts his head just enough so he isn't talking into his pillow.

"In bed, Cas. Trying to sleep. Can this wait?"

"You weren't asleep," Castiel replies. "Nor were you trying. You have been thinking loudly all night."

"Thinking loudly?" Dean echoes. He rolls over and glares at the shadowy silhouette in the doorway. "You can read minds?"

"Unfortunately," comes the answer, and he sounds so pained by it that Dean finds he can't take offense at the intrusion.

"What'd you want, Cas?"

"To apologize. I should not have said that, about saving the world." He pauses for a moment. "After all, the angels have hardly done better."

It's an honest apology, Dean can tell, and a huge admission as well. He waits, but nothing more seems to be coming. When the angel moves away, Dean swears under his breath and slides out from under the blankets.

The house electricity runs off a generator, which in turn runs off diesel. The fuel runs up from Texas are unreliable at best, so Dean tends to skimp on it during the winter in order to run the AC full-time during the summer. As a result, in the chilly spring months he goes to bed fully dressed, and barely has to slow down to put his shoes on before following Castiel outside. He catches up with the angel halfway to the wheat field out back and settles in beside him, walking in silence.

"What's his name?" he asks, after a while. Cas looks at him, blank, and Dean makes a sweeping gesture to indicate the angel's body. "Him. The guy you're wearing."

"My vessel?" Castiel asks.

"Yeah. Him."

"Jimmy." Castiel wraps his arms around himself- even with his powers sealed away he seems to be less bothered by temperature than a human. "Jimmy Novak."

"He still in there?" Dean continues, feeling slightly uneasy.

"Yes. He's asleep." Cas stops in the middle of the field and Dean pulls up short a step or two later.

"He's cool with that?"

"He doesn't want to wake up." Castiel looks up at the sky, where thousands of stars glitter like distant shards of ice. "His wife and daughter were in Chicago."

"Shit." Dean rubs a hand over his face. Then, for reasons he can't even begin to understand, he says, "My brother was in Palo Alto."

The stars are brilliant tonight, as they have been every night ever since the world went dark. Dean hadn't known there were that many in the universe, never mind that could be seen from lonely little Earth. He realizes suddenly that he's looking, however metaphorically, at Heaven.

"Who won?" he asks.

Castiel is silent for a good long time after that. Then he sighs.

"Michael and Lucifer met and fought, as was meant to be. Then they were gone, and we were told to return home. I didn't go."

"Then they were gone? They disappeared?" Dean tries to figure this, tries to imagine two titans of such colossal power that all of Heaven and Hell answered to them just vanishing. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know. Angels don't ask questions when given an order."

"Yet here you are, disobeying orders." Dean feels something like pride for a moment, pride in the angel standing next to him, who bucked countless millennia of training and conditioning and defied everything he had once believed in. "Do you miss it?"

"Heaven? Yes." There is raw pain in those two simple words, and Dean can't look at him. "But I wouldn't go back, even if I could."

"There's nothing for you here. There's nothing for anyone here." Dean snorts and shakes his head, sliding his hands into his pockets. "Are they gonna send someone to haul you back home?"

"If they were, I would have been found by now. And I am not the only one who stayed behind."

"Great." Dean stamps his feet a little, trying to chase away the cold that is seeping slowly in. "Well, I'm going back inside."

He's halfway back to the house when he stops and looks back. Castiel is still watching the stars, listening perhaps to voices only angels can hear.

"I do have a guest bedroom, you know," he calls over, and the angel looks at him.

"I don't sleep."

"Yeah, I know. I mean you don't have to hide out in the barn all day."

Cas doesn't say anything, and Dean knows he's thinking about whether it's worth it, getting friendly with a human if he's only going to move on once the wards heal. Then he nods and turns back to the sky.

And when the wards do heal, he somehow doesn't get around to leaving.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Second set. This one has only four, as the pieces were longer this time around. I am working on the prompts, trust me. The next chapter will feature a few.

To repeat: One word prompts as a title for a piece, or a scene that I will attempt to work into this 'verse. Go wild, people. The harder it is it for me to figure it out, the more determined I am to do it. I'm a masochist like that.

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><p>1. Fly<p>

It's not that easy, of course. There's too much not being said for that one night's half a conversation to settle everything.

The garage starts out every spring clean and clear of clutter, then gets progressively more messy until the end of winter rolls around and all that's left is a narrow, winding path picking its way through the assorted junk, and Dean ends up spending one weekend at the beginning of every spring cleaning it back out enough to pull the Impala in. The tarp he normally leaves it under protects it from summer rain and winter snow easily enough, but only the garage will keep it safe from spring hail and- far more importantly- spring tornadoes, which just love to take large heavy objects such as vehicles and throw them around like children's toys.

He's just closing the door, preparing to start the car, when there's the sound of a rush of feathers, like a bird flying by his ear, and Castiel is suddenly in the passenger's seat. Dean, reacting on instinct, nearly jams the car key into Cas' left eye, but the angel catches his arm and takes the keys away with insulting ease.

"Powers are back, huh?" Dean asks, after giving himself a minute or two to steady his heart rate and find something to say other than very explicit threats that he will never be able to follow through on detailing what will happen the next time Cas just pops in like that. He should be afraid, he is distantly aware- there's a fully-powered angel sitting in his car, one who has just demonstrated how much stronger and more capable he is than any human, and if this has all been an act so Castiel would have a safe place to stay until he heals, this is the moment for the big reveal.

"Yes," Cas says, and hands the keys back. "I didn't mean to startle you. I sometimes forget how nervous humans can be."

Dean starts the car and just sits and listens to the engine for a moment. Better days, he thinks. "Next time stop after the 'didn't mean to startle you' part," he advises, putting the car into drive. Cas looks vaguely alarmed as the car lurches forward, as if he isn't sure he wants on this ride, even if it's only for twenty feet.

The car is a luxury Dean can't really justify other than for simple nostalgia's sake. Perhaps Before such a thing would be considered frivolous and wasteful. But these days, everyone has something they hang onto that gives them the chance to close their eyes and pretend, just for a little while, that the Apocalypse never happened. Dean keeps promising himself that one day he'll chuck this whole Farmer Joe routine and drive down south to Texas and set up shop there, where gas is still readily available and anyone with even a vague understanding of mechanics is welcome. He never does.

"So you can fly now," he says, carefully neutral.

"Yes."

"Anywhere in the world, blink of an eye," Dean continues. "Least, that's what they say."

"Who are _they_?" Castiel asks, honestly curious, and Dean instantly decides that he doesn't want to even try explaining the ubiquitous 'they' to an angel.

"Just people," he dodges. He doesn't say anything else, focusing on making sure he's pulled as far forward as he can get.

But Castiel is no fool, and apparently forgets nothing. "Most of California is underwater," he says, using the same solemn tone as he had during that tense conversation after he'd returned from hiding from Coleman and his boys. "Even if your brother survived, he would not still be there."

Dean yanks the key out of the ignition and swings the car door open. "Did I ask?" he demands harshly, and gets out and slams the door shut behind him before Cas can answer.

Nobody truly knows what happened in California. What they do know is the Pacific Ocean rose by about two hundred feet within a four-hour window. The San Francisco Bay had flooded and spilled over into the valley to the immediate east that runs right up the heart of California. Of course, low-lying port cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles were submerged within a matter of minutes, wiping out a significant chunk of California's population. To say most of California is underwater is largely incorrect; only about a third of it is. More accurate is to say most of the habitable parts of California are underwater.

Dean could ask what happened to make the Pacific rise up like that. Castiel would likely be one of the very few people who could provide the answer. He doesn't ask.

"So no point in going to California?" he asks instead. Castiel had zapped himself out of the car and is lingering silently by the door to the house, once again knowing he had said something wrong and once again not knowing what.

"I can take you if you want to go," the angel says carefully, neither a confirmation nor denial.

"How about Rio?" Dean continues, forcing himself onto a lighter topic. When Cas merely looks at him blankly, he clarifies. "de Janeiro? Party town in Brazil?"

"You want to go to Brazil?" Cas looks well and truly lost now.

"Is it still there?" Dean asks, as slowly as he can without literally spelling it out.

"Yes."

"New Orleans is probably a lost cause," Dean mutters to himself, but before he can ask about Amsterdam, Cas is responding.

"New Orleans survived," he says. Dean blinks at that.

"It survived? The only things keeping that city above water is a couple of floodwalls and a lot of prayer, and it survived the Apocalypse?"

"Do you want to go?" Cas asks, all angelic patience. Dean, standing at the garage door, turns away, looks out over the quiet glory of Kansas in the spring. The fields are showing the barest covering of green and the sky is choked with grey-bottomed clouds that have been sporadically dropping rain by the bucketful all week. He hated this place growing up.

"Ask me tomorrow," he says simply, and closes the garage door.

* * *

><p>2. Storm<p>

He can tell something is off the moment he gets up. The air is too still, too tense, and everything is quiet. Late March is when the birds all simultaneously go insane, trying to outdo each other in general obnoxiousness, and once upon a time the air would have been filled with the pervasive sound of lawn mowers, choking and chugging sullenly after having been started for the first time in four months. These days, the grass grows long.

Cereal goes stale but not bad, so Dean's stuck with off-brand Cheerios from Before and milk fresher than he cares to think about. He takes his bowl and heads outside where the air is thick with the smell of rain, that peculiar mix of wet earth and ozone. After a moment's thought, he steps off the porch and heads over to the barn, circling it to get the best view of the northwest sky.

Cas is already there. Dean, focused on both his cereal and giving the angel a vaguely polite grunt in greeting, doesn't see what he's looking at until he's standing beside him.

"Whoa," he says simply, almost dropping his spoon in his distraction.

Storms in spring are common in farm country. The ocean relocating closer to the mountains has only increased the storms' intensity, whipping them up and sending them rolling down the mountains and across the plains beyond like an avalanche. This one stretches across the horizon, a tall grey line powering its way towards them. Even from this distance, Dean can see the brief, brilliant flashes of white from lightning dancing throughout the towering cloud. A storm like this, the question isn't how many square miles it covers, but how many states.

"Mother Nature at her bitchiest," Dean says after a long consideration. He can feel Castiel's curious gaze on him, but the angel doesn't ask, probably just stowing it away in the mental file labeled Human Weirdness.

"They've been talking about it for the last three hours on the radio," he says instead. Dean pauses in the middle of stabbing his spoon into the mud-like goop his cereal has become and looks at him.

"Radio?" he echoes. He's thinking of the emergency radio that had become standard in every home After, especially in places like here where the weather is prone to violent temper tantrums. Instead he's offered the military radio given to him by Coleman. He'd tossed it on the entryway table, confident that he'd never use it but making sure it was easy to find just in case. Clearly, Cas' time as guest of the militia had given him some basic understanding of the working of these things, for it was on- only dead air now, but with the steady background static that said it was receiving a signal.

"You haven't…" Dean begins, tapping the Talk button with his thumb.

"No," Cas says, thankfully not taking offense at the admittedly insulting implication. He spares Dean another glance, confusion almost tangible. "I believe they are actually following the storm."

"Stormchasers," Dean says, nodding. Knowing full well that that didn't answer any questions, he explains. "They… well, they chase storms. Used to be for kicks mostly, but now they're the closest thing we have to weathermen."

It occurs to him, in the silence that follows, that he might be raising more questions than he's answering.

"They'll announce it over the emergency radio if there's anything to worry about," he continues, then pauses as a thought occurs to him. "Is there some way you can tell if there's going to be a tornado?"

"No," the angel says. "Not now. But storms change quickly."

Dean pokes at his cereal and contemplates making himself some coffee. The first fuel run of the year- supposedly every six weeks, in reality four or five times a year- typically rolls in around this time, and they always bring with them stuff from the ports along the Gulf coast. The coffee these days sucks, but it's still coffee, and a shot or two of the whiskey Dad made sure he always had on hand can make even swamp water go down smooth.

He looks out at the storm again, the wind cold against his face. He doesn't need angels or stormchasers to tell him about this monster. He's seen its type before.

"Is there something to be done to prepare?" Cas asks. Dean snorts.

"We get these all the time, every spring and most summers," he says. He scoops up half a spoonful of cereal and lazily flicks it, food-fight style, out into the empty field in front of him. "We're used to them. Always prepared for these."

If the angel has anything else to say, it has to wait, as the radio chooses that moment to explode in excited, chattering voices. Dean ambles over to the house's back door as he listens to the chasers jabber about hail and wind speeds.

Three hours later, the storm has almost arrived. The thunder is a constant low rumbling sound, like listening to a motorcycle a street away, and the wind is shaking the trees so hard a few of the more fragile branches have already snapped off. Dean imagines more than a few saplings will be going to the woodpile before tomorrow. Lightning flickers, a game of flashlight tag in the sky, and the clouds boil and churn. And still standing outside, exactly where Dean had last seen him, is Castiel.

Dean doesn't quite run over to him, but it's a little too fast to be called a walk, and he's painfully aware of every further step he takes from the dry, warm safety of the house.

"Okay, I don't know what you think you're doing, but it's time to go in now," he tells the angel. He has to yell to be heard, as the wind snatches his words away.

"I like storms," Cas says, and Dean takes a moment to process this. Cas has never expressed such an opinion, never given any indication of a preference. He's never said anything starting with _I like_ or _I don't like_ before. As far as Dean knows, it's an angel thing. They aren't supposed to care about the little things like that.

"The house has windows," he says. "And a covered porch, if you're that into it."

A fork of lightning stabs at the ground, the lightning itself almost purple. For one moment Cas' eyes go unfocused, as though he's seeing something else far away and long ago, before he comes back to the moment. The wind is carrying rain to them by now, handfuls of raindrops that splatter against them, ice cold and needle sharp.

"Look," Dean says, desperate last-ditch attempt, "storms are fun to watch, but not to actually be in, trust me. Come inside and see if you wanna come back out once it's here." He nearly stumbles over the 'trust me' part but doesn't think Cas notices.

After a moment, the angel turns away from the wind, following Dean back inside.

* * *

><p>3. Human<p>

Dean leaves his young guest in the front yard, tending to her ride, and heads back inside and up to his room. A moment later, armed with a change of clothes and real shoes, he comes back down and takes a left into the dining room where Cas has set up shop.

The spare bedroom Castiel has somewhat moved into used to be Dean's, back when he was a kid. In the closet, the angel had found his old backpack from senior year, thrown in there the last day and never retrieved, and had pulled out all the books. The science and math textbooks had been discarded after a blank stare- apparently, angels aren't too concerned about how or why things work, just so long as they do- but the history textbook he had kept, and he spends his spare time crossing out the mistakes and writing corrections in the margins. There's a lot of writing crammed onto most of the pages. Dean doesn't really see the point, but it keeps Cas busy in a way that does not include passively stalking Dean, so he leaves well enough alone.

"Here," Dean says, dropping the pile of clothes on a bare spot on the table. "Get changed. We're going out."

"We?" Castiel echoes. "And why do I need to change?"

"Because no one wears stuff like that anymore," Dean explains patiently. He's trying to behave himself with Cas, who with the minor exception of a few creepy moments has proven himself to be an ideal roommate. "If you're gonna live here, you gotta know how to at least look human. Otherwise it'll be the militia all over again."

At the mention of the militia, Castiel hunches down a little, shoulders rising defensively. It's all Dean needs to say to circumvent an argument that is well over a week old and has yet to meet any sort of permanent resolution. The clothes are Dean's, and therefore a little too big on Cas, but it works. Dean waits until he comes down from the guest room and stops him before he can head outside.

"Couple things," he says. "Anyone asks, your name is Cas. _Do not_ say Castiel, that's an angel name."

Cas forgoes pointing out the blindingly obvious.

"And no powers," Dean continues. "Not for anything, all right? And try not to stare at people either, they don't like that."

There's a brief moment where Dean considers hashing out some sort of backstory, then ultimately rejects the idea. Most people don't ask too many questions anymore, and the few who do are plenty used to their questions going unanswered.

The girl outside is Katherine Miller. She's all of nine years old and can barely remember life Before. She had asked Dean once what he missed most about the easy life and he'd had to bullshit his way through the response, as 'everything' didn't seem to be what she was looking for. Her ride is a horse, a common solution to the gasoline shortage. Naturally the animal whickers and noses at Cas, falling quickly in love with the angel. Katie pulls it around and away with the expertise of someone who has spent years on horseback and talks as they walk.

"So mom said to come out and get you 'cause that big windstorm th'other day blew over one of the fences, she don't know which, and the cows are wandering wild."

"Cows wandering wild," Dean grins. "Unless there's a red cape or a clown involved, 'cows' and 'wild' simply do not belong in the same sentence."

For his trouble, he gets two equally blank looks.

"Never mind," he says, waving it off. "I don't wrangle livestock, Katie."

"Yeah, no, she's got the Richardson boys helpin' her with that," Katie says airily. "She jus' wants ya to rebuild the fence."

Dean looks over at Cas, who had put the human between himself and the horse and has been walking in total silence. If he has an opinion on building fences, he isn't showing it. Katie, for her part, has barely looked away from the angel, but it seems more the intense curiosity of a child starved for new experiences and different people, not the 'oh my god _what is he_' sort of stare that Dean had been halfway expecting.

"By the way," Dean says, finally putting the girl out of her misery, "this is Cas. Cas, Katie."

"Hi," Katie greets. She gets a 'hello' in return from the angel and smiles shyly. She's old enough not to ask the awkward questions, and also apparently old enough for spontaneous crushes, Dean sees, and tries not to smile.

The Miller property is only a little bigger than the Winchester's. Most of the farm land went to the Richardsons just After, leaving the divorcee Christina Miller and her daughter with about an acre or so and a half dozen cows. Christina shamelessly uses Mitch Richardson's three grown sons to help her with her livestock and her crops- either a small field or a giant vegetable patch, depending on how you choose to look at it- and pays for it with some of the best cooking Dean has ever known.

She greets the two fence builders cheerfully, sparing Cas one brief, curious glance, before pointing them out back to the loaded-up pickup. As they head out the door she tosses Dean a plastic grocery bag packed with two lunches. Dean manages to hustle Cas out before the angel feels the need to explain that he doesn't eat.

Getting Cas into the truck is easy, but Dean finds himself trying not to take too much offense at the angel's rigid posture while the truck is moving. He swallows the urge to comment about how he's been driving since he was fourteen and has yet to kill anyone, but he does manage to find just about every pothole in the worn dirt road. He feels like a dick for it soon enough, though, when they're actually working. Cas is a quiet, competent worker, and takes orders well- his angel nature, if Dean has to guess, angels being the perfect soldiers. He gouges himself pretty good on the barbed wire a couple of times, but as per Dean's no-power-no-matter-what rule, merely suffers through rather than healing it.

Christina makes them supper when they return to the house and gently probes for information on Dean's new friend. Dean ends up fielding all the questions, as Cas seems to have adopted a 'no talking around the humans' philosophy, and answers as honestly as he can- a refugee from militia territory, he says, and drops in a mention of living in Chicago just Before, and Christina changes the subject with a sympathetic glance towards Cas. She talks instead about town gossip and weather patterns, which all means next to nothing to Dean, who has not even a small patch of farmland or livestock and very little interest in the goings-on in town. He's far more interested in Cas' reaction to the pot roast he's been picking at, watching the angel's face as he experiences each new taste and texture.

They leave while it's still early enough to make it home before nightfall. Christina pushes a foil-topped baking dish into Dean's hands and gives him cooking directions. Once they're on the road, he pauses long enough to peel the foil back and smells cheese and tomato sauce.

"Lasagna," he almost whines to Cas. "I think I love that woman."

The angel merely holds up his injured hand. "May I heal this now?" he asks, tugging slightly at the band-aids Katie had so carefully applied.

"Yes," Dean says, and inhales the scent of the lasagna once more before covering it again.

"They accepted me as human," Cas says as the start walking again, peeling the band-aids off and rubbing his thumb over the unblemished skin beneath. "Was that the point behind my being there?"

"Socialization for angels," Dean mutters. "You keep hanging around, sooner or later, someone's gonna figure it out. Needs to be people who know you, know you aren't interested in hurting anyone."

"Your word would not be enough?" Cas asks, and Dean snorts.

"Hell no. Word gets out, my head's gonna be on the chopping block just as much as yours."

Castiel contemplates this silently as Dean clutches his lasagna protectively close and daydreams about leftovers. He'll have to crank up the generator to get the fridge working, but it'll be worth it.

Then a hand lands on his shoulder and the world _lurches_, likes he's in a washer that just went into spin cycle. He lands on his feet in his own front yard and chokes on the rising wave of nausea. Cas rescues the lasagna from him as he staggers a few steps away, gagging and retching. After a moment he catches his breath and straightens up.

"Don't do that again," he orders hoarsely once he's sure he can open his mouth without throwing up. Castiel nods once and hands him the lasagna like it's worth far more than just a few good meals and heads inside without a word.

Dean clutches at the baking dish and stares at the door, thinking about the world on a platter and unspoken promises.

* * *

><p>4. Sam<p>

The Lake Perry Country Club and Golf Course is over twenty miles from the house. As he has better things to do than walk that, Dean drives instead, a rare luxury that he fully enjoys by cranking up the radio and rolling down the windows and stretching his baby's legs. Thank god for Kansas flatness, he thinks as he's pushing ninety down the main roads.

Had Castiel asked, Dean would've told him where he was going. He doesn't know how he would have explained it, but he would have tried. But Cas didn't ask, didn't even poke his head out from wherever he hangs out when he's not in the dining room. He has it easy, really- he had wound up in the barn of the one person living in farm country who isn't a farmer, and one of the very few people in the world who wouldn't kill a helpless angel. Or worse; Dean hasn't yet asked what the militia wanted with an angel, and doesn't think he'll ever find the nerve for that one.

Some of the roads in the world survived intact, but a majority of them- including every single one of the international highways in America- are shattered and shifted. Old 70, which runs through north Lawrence, has a series of breaks just before town, where it looks like someone cut across the road and shifted the piece over, so the yellow line down the middle runs into the white line marking the right shoulder. The road leading out of Lawrence goes good for about nineteen miles before hitting a patch that looks like a crumpled-up paper bag. There's a dirt track that runs beside it but tires are hard to patch and harder to replace, so Dean parks on the shoulder and walks the last mile. No one bothers to steal cars these days.

The country club was one of those places that only the wealthy and entitled knew about Before. After the great social equalizer that was the Apocalypse, it's now public property. Dean heads past the club itself, not really feeling like talking to anyone, and into the green beyond.

Three quarters of the world's population, he had told the angel. He hadn't been lying or exaggerating- not so far as he knows, at least, communication these days being so spotty. Kansas had suffered along with the rest of the world, the victim of impossible weather and violent tremors, unknown plagues and violent hysteria. Big cities like Wichita and Topeka had been targeted by demon raids, leaving sections of the city burning in their wake. But Kansas had been largely untouched. The hammer had fallen east of here, in southern Missouri, and north in Chicago. The relatively unremarkable college town of Lawrence had huddled on the fringes, watching in horror and waiting its turn for extinction, until- mere days after it had all begun- silence had fallen. And thanks to Castiel, Dean alone knows why it had suddenly gone so quiet.

Still, enough people had died here that the cemeteries overflowed. And it didn't feel right anymore, being buried next to a church. The bloodthirsty angels of the Apocalypse had rather taken the shine off of Christianity. So the golf course had been converted, markers erected in lieu of anything else since the staggering number of the dead had led to the bodies all being cremated en masse, a la the German concentration camps. Human pragmatism meeting human romanticism, Dean thinks wryly- they erect monuments to the lost and dump the ashes of the dead into bricked-over pits.

April third, four years ago today, he heard about California. Four years ago today he learned his brother is most likely dead.

It's a longer walk to the proper area than it was to get here from the car. Dean stays off the path, where the greens keeper trolls on a rickety old golf cart, looking for people to play tour guide for. He knows his way around well enough. Past the seventh hole, around the water hazard that is now a thriving frog pond whose vocal residents can be heard for half a mile, beyond the gate that had been set up more to separate it from the rest of the area than to keep people out, and into the world of the lost, friends and family whose fate is unknown. The names are carved in alphabetical order onto large marble tiles- floor tiles in the country club, or so goes the rumor, but Dean thinks he recognizes it from a high school field trip the state capitol building in Topeka- and the tiles are sorted by state. There are twenty-nine tiles. Illinois has five and California has seven.

Dean stops at the last tile in the California row. He doesn't come here often, only on this anniversary, and so he isn't exactly familiar with this. He starts at the bottom and scans up and stops at Sam's name, staring at the carving in the black marble, imprinting it in his mind. Four years can feel like a lifetime in one moment and only seconds the next. He doesn't know why he comes out here every year, except it's the sort of thing Sam would do so Dean does it in his stead. Then he thinks of Castiel.

After a long bout of soul searching he's finally figured out why he's helping the angel- he needs to have someone to take care of, someone to look after. It's not that he needs to be needed. It's just that he's a big brother, and a damn good one, and that lost-little-boy vulnerability in Cas had instantly appealed to all the big brother instincts Dean possesses.

"You'd like him," he says, startling at the sound of his own voice. Then he smirks, thinking of quiet somber smart Cas, so very different from the brash and bold Dean, even subdued as his personality has been by loss and circumstance. "He'd like you. Probably better than he likes me."

Dean contemplates the marble tile, which in the end is just a big chunk of pretty rock. Alive or dead, Sam can't hear him, and won't be responding. He turns away, obligation met, and starts the long walk back. Every year he promises himself he won't waste precious time or fuel by coming out here next year. Every year he proves himself a liar.

Castiel, thankfully, never asks about it.


End file.
